Until the 17th century the discovery of
skeletons of giants was a quite common event. In January 1546 and then
in the years 1564, 1580 and 1613 bones were unearthed near the castle of
Chaumont (France). The bones were identified as the bones of the giant Teutobochus, king of the barbarians, and exhibited in many French cities. Jesuit Jacques Tissot describes the discovery as follows:

“The real story of the life and the
bones of the giant Teutobochus, king of the Teutons, Cimbrians and
Ambrones, defeated in the year 105 before Christ. He was defeated along
with his army of 100.000 men by Mario, the Roman consul, and then he was
killed and buried near the castle once known as Chaumont and now as
Langon, near the Roman town of Daulphiné.On this site his tomb was discovered, thirty feet long, with his
name written in Roman letters. The bones in the grave exceeded 25 feet
and one tooth was heavier than 11 pounds, all bones were monstrous in
size and shape, as you will see in display“

Fig.1.
Generations of giants, image from “Mundus subterraneus” by Athanasius
Kircher (1678). The biggest giant is based on the bones discovered in
Sicily, from left to right follows a common man, the legendary Goliath,
the giant of Lucerne and the giant of Mauritania.

Today the supposed bones of giants are identified as fossils of extinct large ice-age mammals and gigantic reptiles known as dinosaurs.

However already in 1638 the Italian physicist Galileo Galilei(1564-1642)realized that the basic principles of biomechanics refute the existence of human giants. In his book “Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche intorno a due nuove Scienze Attenenti alla Meccanica & i Movimenti Locali”
(Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to the Two New
Sciences of Mechanics and Movements) he describes how the bones of large
and small animals must differ in their proportions as a result of
physical laws. A larger bone is not simply a larger copy of a small
bone, but its thickness increases much faster than the length to support
the increased weight of a larger body. A human giant would never show
human proportions, but be a shapeless monster, unable even to move .... Eppur non si muove!

Fig.2. Figure
from “Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche…” showing how thickness of a
column (and bone) must increase much faster than lenght to support
increased forces.